Thursday, July 25, 2013

I recently had a birthday. Yes, another one. That makes well over 35 of
them now. And birthdays, like everything else in my life, are different since last
October’s little BS (right ischemic brainstem stroke). My birthday gave me ample
proof that my brain has become a whole 'nother can-O-worms...

It used to be that on my birthday, I wanted a BIG fuss—a 60’s themed
Annette Funicello-ish beach party (girls in high-rise polkadot bikinis, boys
with bongo drums); non-stop sushi & sake with 25 of my loudest, closest
friends; a spontaneous roadtrip to Area 51; cliff-jumping in Mexico. Okay,
maybe not cliff-jumping, but something wild and memorable. This year—and this is
Proof #1 of an altered brain—I wanted home,
calm, low lights, no drama, peace.

The SassCam 9000

Proof
#2 was my birthday
wish list. Past lists included things like guitars, clothes, shoes, jewels, a
winemaking kit, or a sequined princess costume. This year, I’d already gotten
Mom’s gift—a fabulous trip to Louisiana to see my nieces—and the only other
things I wanted were a new Kindle I could read outside in bright light, and a
digital trail camera. Seriously…what midlife woman in her right mind wants a Sasquatch camera for her birthday?!

Anyhoo, Ray gave me a Kindle Paperwhite and a lovely, relaxed dinner out
with good friends; my youngest son gave me a frameable work of peacock art,
friends gave me bird/peacock accoutrement galore, and…ta-da! My older boys gave
me a 4 MP Simmons Whitetail Night Vision trail camera—my “SassCam.” I will
finally catch (on SD card, at least) that Sasquatch, wolverine, hyena pack, chupacabra,
pride of lions, or pteradactyl that’s been picking off our peacocks!

Where's my pattern for knit coyote sweaters?

So here’s our new routine: every evening, we walk the dogs and find a new
spot for the SassCam. Every morning, Ray retrieves the camera, so we can see
what was slinking around the night before. So far, we’ve “captured” coyotes,
raccoons (many…often), and a feral cat, all potential pea-snackers.

Hamming it up for the camera.

We’re not big on shooting things (we’re a disaster at it, actually…see http://uncanneryrow.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-case-of-disappearing-peafowl.html), so we’ve come up with an alternate plan to protect
our dwindling flock of four peacocks (possibly three…we haven’t seen our
nesting hen for quite a while): Ray will “mark” our territory everywhere we’ve
spotted wildlife, and I will dump cayenne pepper in any burrows we find. If
that doesn’t work, I’ll knit some cozy catch & release snares. If that
doesn’t work, we'll wire the pasture for sound and play Tiny Tim’s
“Tiptoe Through the Tulips” 24/7. If that doesn’t work, we'll give up peacocks and start raising raccoons for the pet industry. If that doesn’t work, we'll import—only as a last resort, mind you—a velociraptor. (Proof #3?)

Monday, July 15, 2013

“He could not imagine a homestead, he
could not picture an idyllic nook, without gooseberries.” Anton Chekhov

This is not a food blog, but I must digress today to sing the praises of
that humble fruit about which Chekhov clearly knew the score: ribes uva-crispa – gooseberries. Gooseberries may be the
world’s most underappreciated and underutilized fruit, but they’ve always been
a staple in our family life.

Gooseberries are more well-known in the UK, where gooseberry “fool,” a
rich, sweet-tart pudding, is fairly common. As a Nebraska girl, I’d never heard
of gooseberries until I met Ray. His mother knew the secret, and the berries
had been part of her summer garden haul for decades. In fact, our original
gooseberry bush came from her, and our gardens have never been without
gooseberries since.

Gooseberries grow on extremely dense, head-high, very thorny bushes. Peacocks love gooseberries, too, so our bushes are in the corner of our garden, inside the fence. The
berries are small, maybe ½-1 inch. They mature from firm, green and very tart to
soft, blush-pink and semi-sweet. Most recipes call for green berries, and this
is when most folks pick. The berries freeze well with no pre-fussing. They’re
packed with Vitamin C and phytonutrients, and they’re a good source of fiber
and potassium. You can buy canned gooseberries, but they’re expensive and not
the same. I’ve never seen fresh gooseberries in a market or store, even though
desserts and bevvies made with fresh green gooseberries might just be the
perfect combo of sweet & sour. I’m drooling on the keyboard…

So apparently, last summer’s extreme drought, Ray’s irregular watering,
and our total lack of pruning and weeding formed the perfect trifecta of
gooseberry cultivation, because this summer, we had a bumper crop like nothing
we’ve seen before. Ray did all the picking—an hour or two each evening for six
evenings straight. He armed for battle: long sleeves, heavy jeans and boots,
thick gloves, mosquito-netting hat, ice cream buckets (one has to pry one’s way
into the thorny heart of the Thicket of Doom—the center of the bushes—to find
the best berries). In spite of his armor, I would still hear occasional loud
outbursts of profanity punctuating the summer calm, and I’d know he was pulling
another thorn out of his hand.

While Ray picked, I made the really tough sacrifice: I suffered inside, in the air-conditioning, watching TV while I “topped & tailed” picked berries
(each berry must have its stem and dried blossom removed by hand). It was
meditative and excellent physical therapy, and thanks to DVR’d episodes of Mountain Man, I’m pretty sure I could
field dress a squirrel now.

We ended up with about 30 quarts of berries in the freezer, and we
swapped a gallon for a tray of fresh-picked strawberries. I’ll make our old
standby’s: Ray’s mom’s gooseberry pie and gooseberry “pudding” (sticky
cobbler). This year, I’ll also make some jam, and (best of all), I found
several recipes for gooseberry wine—a light, lovely white wine. I’ll bet you
can guess what everyone’s getting for Christmas this year…

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

This whole Snowden/NSA business has me pondering…did we EVER really have
the presumption of privacy? I’ll tell you a funny story that explains why I’m terribly
intriguing and notorious, and why the answer is NO.

When I was 16, I worked as a maximum-security teller, deep in the vault
of a major Omaha bank. I counted, sorted, and balanced deposits of 500K to a
couple million every day. I counted and sorted brand spanking new money that
came from the Federal Reserve. I trained straw-brained ex-Nebraska football
players so they could move upstairs into management and make 100 times my
salary ([growling] another blog post someday).

Anyway, when new money came from the Fed, it came bundled between two
dollar-sized pieces of pine called “fed boards” that kept the bills all nice
& neat. Sometimes, the ink on bills was so fresh when the Fed bundled the
money, that the impression of bills would be stamped on the boards. And when a
teller unbundled bills, or took rubber bands off bundled bills in large
deposits, sometimes a corner of a bill would tear off. We had a guide to show
us how big the tear could be for the bill still to be usable. So the girls
(all females in the vault, except the manager, of course [growling], another
blog post) in MaxSec had a habit of saving fed boards and torn corners for me.
I had plans to make a wonderful collage out of it all—a mushroom cloud, an atom
bomb, a weeping woman…I dunno, something rebellious...it was the 70’s.

When I left the bank after a 1½ years, I took my garbage bag of
boards & corners with me. And when I moved into a little rental house in
Lincoln with my friend, I took them with me. And when I ran off with musicians
to New Mexico and my roommate joined the Moonies and left town while I was gone
(another blog post someday), and my mom had to move all my stuff back to Omaha,
somehow the bag got left behind.

Now I’m back from New Mexico (tense shift intentional), and I get a
job working as a teller at an Omaha drive-through bank ([growling] another blog
post someday—I got fired for objecting to sexism on the job). One day, I get a
call at work. It’s the Omaha Secret Service. They want me to come to their
office. NOW.I go downtown. They escort me into a tiny room, where two nondescript men in grey suits
(seriously) are waiting. One’s sitting behind a desk, one’s sitting on the
edge of the desk. They’re both young, barely older than my then 19 years. As I
recall, the conversation goes something like this:

SS: Do you know why you’re here?

ME: No.

SS: (pulls a black garbage bag from behind the desk and opens it a
smidgen to let me look inside) Do you recognize this?

ME: Hey! Those are my fed boards!

SS: Where did you get these? What were you planning to do with them?

ME: (long story about MaxSec, many side comments about sexist business
practices, substitute “doll house” for “atom bomb,” laughing)

SS: Ms. P (me)…do you think this is funny?

ME: Yes.

SS: (pulls out an envelope from the desk, lets me peek inside) Do you
recognize these?

SS: Do you know defacing American currency is a crime? What did you plan
to do with these?

ME: (various non-threatening collage ideas)

SS: Ms P, did you live at (Lincoln address) from X-date to X-date?

ME: Yes.

SS: We received a report from witnesses who claim you were engaged in
counterfeiting, and that they observed you burying things in the backyard at
this address.

ME: (busted out laughing so hard, I nearly fell off the chair)

SS: Ms. P…do you think this is a laughing matter?

ME: Are you kidding? Can I have my stuff back?

SS: No.

It turns out, two old wino brothers moved into the Lincoln house after
my roommate and I left. They found the boards & corners, left behind in the
house. They were delusional and paranoid, and they ended up reporting us to the
SS. According to the brothers, in addition to counterfeiting and burying things
in the yard (bodies??) while they were sleeping, we also followed them
everywhere they went, although they really couldn’t say what we looked like.

Two things: (1) I totally have underworld cred from this, right? I
should have a gangster name, like Mavis Moneybags or Doris the Digger. (2) I’m
pretty sure I was on some “keep an eye on her” list long before the NSA started
keeping their bajillion fly-eyes on us all.

I like to think the young SS guys laughed their arses off after I left
that day—it was probably the most fun they had their entire careers. I also
like to think the SS, NSA, or whomever is tasked with reviewing homeland spy
data, is so horrendously bored by our lives that they can
barely get out of bed in the morning to go to work.

I’m glad Snowden filled us in on what the NSA is up to, but I’m not
worried them spying on my life. If they’re listening, they’ll find out I adore my
kids, I dream about retirement, I knit like a fiend, I worry about my ailing dog, I love poetry, I don't have much patience with apathetic students, I’m slightly obsessive about coffee and
wine, and like any good daughter, I call my mother. Wow. Fascinating.